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When you are a working professional, either working from home or commuting to an office, the last thing you want is complicate your life with boring household stuff.
Sadly, if you are a woman, the burden of running house still mostly fall on you, even if gender equality is becoming more and more prevalent in certain segments of the society.

I think it is no secret that we still have a long long way to go to reach that point at which household chores INCLUDING household management (the whole planning bit that is often seen as trivial) will finally be something that both parties in a couple split evenly.

This post is really not about to debate who does what, and arguing about who is right or wrong. This post is about accepting that yes, running a household is a big job, regardless of who does the most of it (I know stay at home dads who pull up long hours too).
No this post is about doing something to make your life and the life of your family a whole lot easier, and before I get into the whole nitty gritty of things, it is a post that comes with Amazon affiliate links to all the things I use (or have on my wish list) to make my life that much simpler when it comes to meal time prepping. This means that if you click on a link and purchase anything, I'll get paid a commission at no extra cost to you.

The meal time ordeal

Both hubby and I work full time, he has a fairly "short" commute for Mumbai and on most day he is home before 9pm, he travels frequently enough too, which means there are a lot of days I am holding the fort alone.

I myself work from home as a designer, artist, blogger and art teacher, I work about 8 hours a day on those things alone, the rest of the time, I take care of our daughter, pets, and yes the home because let's be fair I am the one spending the most time in it and I am the one with the better understanding of what to be done household wise.

If you are a regular reader of this awesome blog, you know what I made the choice to go maid free in April 2017, we built a system around that concept, and yes we have had several upgrades to minimise our working load : a dishwasher, a robot cleaner, and yes we still hire a cook on a daily basis to take care of the Indian meal hubby packs to take to work for lunch.

Why? Because neither him nor me want to spend that much time and energy in an already busy day. A basic Indian meal ties you to the kitchen for about an hour every morning, it's definitely not what we want, and we are fortunate to have the option to delegate it, so be it!

I still am in charge of my own lunch, and dinner (often just for me and my daughter). I also have the challenge of being chronically and GENETICALLY insulin resistant. I say genetically, because it is not the type that is reversed with lifestyle changes, I simply have a body that is highly intolerant to all type of carbs, and that coupled with a naturally slow metabolism mean I can't eat a typical carbohydrate heavy Indian meal, eat least not everyday.

Lunch is easy, I just usually do a wholesome salad, dinner is a bit harder, because it also needs to fulfil the need of my ever growing daughter.

This is the one big meal I take charge for in the day, the problem, is that it also is the one meal that comes at the end of a long day.

On your typical day, I usually start wrapping up the day between the time I pick my daughter up in school and the time we head out to play, swim or conduct an art class.

My day as a mom usually end around 8.30, and I try to end my day as an artist around that time on most days too.

Cooking dinner sucks!

What I came to realise is that cooking dinner SUCKS! There said it! And growing up, it's no wonder my mom would often do a typical Swiss "Abendsbrot" dinner, simply taking cheese, bread and cold cuts to the table. She was already cooking a full meal for lunch as people head home for said meal in my homeland.

I myself prefer a bit more variety for dinner, so evening is a mix of cooked stuff, soup dinners, and yes we do Abendsbrot from time to time.

What amaze me though, is that in our busy times, there is still the stigma of not being good enough if you don't cook anything from scratch or produce a gourmet meal every day (if not 3 times a day).

I'll give you that eating out, or eating take out is not a healthy solution, there is still no reason why anybody, man or woman should be tied to a stove at 7-8pm to cook a full meal after having clocked an already full day of work.

Things like meal prepped in advance, leftover should be made to be a bit more accepted, and in any case, shortcuts and appliances to cut our workload should not be poo-pooed as stupid, a luxury or a lazy person's fix.

Enough already!

Gadgets to the rescue!

To fit our lifestyle, and busy schedule, I prioritised expenses that help us save time, my kitchen is full of appliances and gizmos that make that dreaded evening meal a much much simpler affair.

One of my favourite is my Soup maker :

The one I purchased is the Tefal Easy soup, which at the time of writing this is listed as currently unavailable (so won't share that link). But you can find others by simply searching for "Soup Maker".

Those nifty appliances all make the process of making a hearty, healthy soup super easy. All you got to do is peel and chop your ingredients, toss them in the soup maker with water and select whether you want your soup to be creamy (blended and smooth) or with vegetable or meat chunks. It then, cook and blend on its own and beep to let you know when it is done, and will even keep your soup warm for a little while.

It's not that soups were ever complicated, but the old fashioned way, it would mean keeping an eye on the cooking pot, and then either waiting for it to cool down to toss in your "mixie" or use a stick blender to blend it.

This bad boy does it all, and it also doubles as a regular blender to make milkshakes and smoothies.

Another gadget I love is this one :

This is an electric egg boiler, this cheap, super compact, and really easy to use. In Switzerland, you can actually purchase hard boiled eggs directly in a supermarket, along with fresh ones if that is what you need.

In India, you are left with the task of boiling them yourself, it's not that it's hard to do so, it's that it's easy to forget your pan on the stove and realise hours later that your eggs are now burning in their shells at the bottom of said pan, often after you wondered where that smokey smell came from....

Holy Moly, crap the eggs!

This tiny gizmo, let you cook hard boiled and half boiled eggs depending how much water you put in it in the first place, and it will switch off as soon as it's done. It's THAT easy.

I usually boil 6 eggs in one go, store everything in the fridge and either put them in my lunch salad or eat them as a snack. On an Abendsbrot dinner, they make it to the dinning table too.

Next on my list is this nifty tool :

Amazon doesn't allow me to link to one specific product as an affiliate for this categrory, but it doesn't matter because I've been a long lasting fan of rice cookers over the year and I know that they all do the job regardless of brands, just pick the one that fits your need and budget, if you don't fill like clicking on the generic link above, simply search from Rice Cooker on Amazon.

Seriously that is the one item I think every household should own, especially in India where rice is often a staple.

I had my first rice cooker in my tiny studio apartment back in Geneva. I had a serious space constraint, and a tiny hotplate stove, so I needed an option to cook my rice separately when I was busy cooking the rest of the meal on the hot plates.

When I moved to India, I did without for a few years, using my pressure cooker instead. The problem, is that while you are busy cooking everything else it's easy to loose track of how many whistles went by, it frequently resulted in burned rice in our home, and hours trying to salvage the bottom of the cooker scrubbing the burnt crap for hours. So we went back to the rice cooker, and never looked at cooking rice the old fashioned day ever again, that awesome appliance switches off automatically when it's done cooking, like the egg boiler.

I don't eat much rice myself, for obvious health reason, but that thing can also cook pearl barley which is a healthier substitute for rice when you are plagued with insulin resistance or diabetes.

Now on to an item that is on my wish list :

I have quite a few friends who rave about their bread makers, and this model from Kent is on "to buy soon" list.

I am not a massive bread eater, and until recently I was happy purchasing my multrigrain sourdough loaf from a local brand, but they made the move to package everything into even more plastic than before, so I am boycotting them big time.

To anybody that has tried their hand at bread making, you know it's time consuming. You need to knead your dough, let it rest, knock it back, let it prove again, and finally bake it.

This means you need to remember you have a batch of dough raising, it's all good if you life revolve around the kitchen.

Unfortunately my life is more likely to revolve around watercolor, Copic markers and my scanner. That means I have often forgotten about the raising dough the whole day.

A bread maker pretty much does it all for you, it mix and knead your dough, let it rise and when it is ready to bake it, will do so, you can apparently even set it on a timer so that the bread bakes exactly when you need it.

This is an expense I wasn't fully willing to make until the plastic disaster that my favourite bread brand became. And all the other bread alternative on the market are loaded with preservative, taste enhancers and artificial ingredients, that not only make the bread unhealthy but often make it taste crappy too.

Narrow your needs and see what you can do to make it simpler.

Ok, so not all of you are soup fanatics, or need an egg boiler, the whole point is that if you find yourself dreading one task in your kitchen, you should work on finding a solution to make it a much simpler thing.

This means either making batches of certain food in advance and freeze it, or automate a process so that it frees you to do something else.

Nobody really gets medals or trophies for slaving in the kitchen, and if you have kids, let's face it, half the time you will be rewarded with whining, complaining and reluctance to eat the food you spent an hour or more to produce in the first place. Is loosing your sanity really worth it? Nope, not by a long shot.

If you steam a lot of things, including idlis, buy yourself an electric steamer. If you guys eat a lot of grilled food, invest in a good grill that will work on a timer, hate cooking rotis (can't blame you at all here) get a roti maker.

You all deserve to make your life as fuss free as possible, and that kind of attitude starts by reducing the amount of work load in your home as much as possible.

It's starting to feel a lot like Summer over here! We already had a few heat spells, and with it comes the urge to stay cool indoor.
The irony being that if you live higher latitudes, you might still be begging for Spring to come and melt all that snow. If you live in a snow globe at the moment, let me send you some of our heat to melt that white crap.

You can start by infusing a little Spring spirit into your home by downloading this month's calendar page. It's green, happy and has a hint of a tropical vibe to it.
I know that in the US March is synonym with St Patrick's Day and everything green, but believe it when I tell you that in my synesthetic mind March has always been associated with a bright light green, long before I even knew what St Patrick is all about.

When I planned this 2019 Calendar, not only did I want to keep with an Art Nouveau inspired theme for my illustrations, I also decided to keep with the colors I see in my mind for each month, as closely as possible.
I also used this little project as an opportunity to perfect my skills with Alcohol based marker and slowly built a Copic marker collection. For this particular illustration, I worked with a a few greens I had, including this Copic Color Fusion set 5 (Amazon affiliate link).

As it is the case with all my calendar illustrations, they are for sale in my Society6 shop in both its month specific and stand alone avatar.

It's called "Green Lady" on the version without words (original huh?) and comes on almost every products Society6 has to offer, including this gorgeous coffee mug, because this series of illustration is very cartoony, it looks good on things like stationery items, t-shirts and art prints.

If you are a bullet journal addict, or have friends born in March, I uploaded a month specific version on select items in my shop. This design goes under the name "Lady March" and when I first decided to put it up for sale, this was with stickers in mind. I also have it as a t-shirt, mug, and other tabletop items, along with the notebook as below :

Which one is your favourite?

This post contains both Amazon and Society6 Affiliate links, so if you click on them and make a purchase, I get paid a commission at no extra cost to you

I've been working from the comfort of my home for close to 13 years now, and if there is one thing I learned from doing so, is that self discipline matters....A LOT

People often get this idea that you get more time for yourself, that working from home is easy, that you will be more available for other things, that you can take it easy...And if you mention you are an entrepreneur or freelancer, suddenly people will think that you are living THE life and your life is all about sitting on the sofa and watch Netflix the whole day long.

Wouldn't it be perfect? I mean seriously getting paid to sit around the whole day long doing nothing. Well, I hate to break it to you, I don't know a single person freelancer or salaried who gets to do just that at home. So if your only motivation to quit your job, or negotiate with your boss to let you work from home is just so you get more time to do what you love, you might want to re-think that plan right away.

I'm writing this blog post because I spent the last 1.5 months not working the same hours and out of my home office (on the sofa in the living room) because my mom was visiting.
While I knew how much time and effort and sweat I put in my business and career, I frankly only realised during this past month that it amounted to more than I thought even though it never felt like work.
And while we are on the topic, as much as I loved having my mom around and enjoyed spending time with her and welcomed the change of routine, I am also VERY glad to have my home office back and being able to focus on bigger projects to come.

Self discipline is paramount people

When I started working from home, I was a freelance translator, and was kept quite busy with a big assignment that spanned several years on an off with a client. The only way to pull it off, was to dedicate a minimum of 4 hours a day. Because translation can be quite redundant and well, boring, I used to break those hours all through the day. What I realised early on, is that the hardest part was to get people around me to get on board with that.

Hubby was going to office full time, so that wasn't too hard, but when my in-laws came to visit for over a month after we got married it was hard for them to wrap their head around the fact I wasn't going to be cooking 3 square meals a day, and serve them tea and snacks in between.

When I went to Switzerland for 2 months in 2008, I took my work with me, and it was difficult for my own family to understand that I wasn't exactly on a long holiday, I still had deadlines to meet and work hours to pull.

When my daughter was born, I had to quit freelancing simply because being sleep deprived, taking care of a newborn and spending whatever was left of my day translating French into English became impossible.

Then I got more serious with my blog, and I know many thought it was just a hobby, a way to kill time while "off duty" as a wife and mom. While I wasn't getting paid my dues at first, I treated it like work from the get go. Why? Because that's who I am : perfectionist, dedicated to whatever project I embark on and intent to treat everything I do seriously.

Turns out I was right, what was just a fun hobby, turned into me making a name for myself and starting getting related or less related projects on the side which progressively lead to where I stand today as an artist.

If you don't put in the time, you aren't doing it right

So, you want to make it being your own boss and working from home? Be prepared to work hard and long.

When I blogging was my sole gig, I used to put about 4-5 hours a day either writing, or planning a blog project or being involved in promoting my work. That came on top of actually pulling a DIY project, on busy days, I could easily be absorbed by blog related things for 8 or 9 hours.

With my artwork and designing gig, I still blog a couple of times a month, and spend 5-6 hours at my desk either painting, editing, publishing or promoting my work around. When I am not doing that, I am watching videos by other artists and teachers to perfect myself and learn new skills.

Speaking of classes, I teach kids art classes and conduct workshops that take me a couple of hours a week. When I go on a walk to stay fit (and keep diabetes at bay) I usually either listen to a podcast, or perky music that engage my thought and usually triggers new ideas I can use in my work.

Last but not least, I try to spend a few evenings a week reading about business, marketing or ways to perfect myself through self-help book.

Still not impressed? I doodle for fun frequently to get those artsy crafty muscles from going weak.

All in all, I spend about 8-9 or more hours of my day being engaged into something related to my work. It doesn't leave much time to sit on the sofa to watch Netflix huh?

You need to do what you love to pull it through

Unless you are a salaried person with a boss keeping you on a tight leash, the only way to make it working from home is to make sure your work is something you LOVE doing.

That way it won't look like you are working hard and you'll keep yourself motivated. If you love blogging, drawing, shooting videos, painting, or whatever it is you plan to make it a career from the comfort of your home, it has to make you feel happy, happier than the urge to sit in front of your computer playing video games or binge watching your favourite series on Netflix.

If you find yourself constantly grabbing the TV remote, it means that whatever you planned to make your career isn't strong enough.

Dedicate a space in your home

It goes with self-discipline really, but if you have a corner of your home you can dedicate to work, you'll be far more likely to pull the hours. I wrote a whole blog post on that topic a few months ago.

And while I was relegated to my sofa this past month, I still went through a ritual of setting up my space before working. It involved opening my laptop, keeping my journal, notebooks and pencils nearby, and make sure my tea mug and water glass were on the coffee table within reach. Everything non work related like the TV remotes went off the coffee table and I even told my mom to let me work. She forgot a few times and tried to get me to chit chat, only for me to remind her I was working on something.

You need your family and friends on board

I said it before, the biggest obstacle is when it comes to family and friends to understand that just because you don't commute to an office daily, it doesn't mean you aren't working.

I still face that challenge every school holidays, though thankfully, as Ishita grows older, she is more independent and it leaves me with more time to focus on work all through the day.

When family comes visiting, I treat it as a leave, and usually take a few days off, or in the case of an extended visit like I just got to deal with, re-work my hours and priorities. With my mom it was one day of work, and one day nearly off as we got busy outside the home with other things. I established a routine of really working full time every other days, and making sure that on those days I was actually not available for anything else.

You and your work are your priority

It's easy to fall into the trap of seeing working from home as a way to "have it all" or at the least have more time for others.

Do this, and you'll be heading to Burnoutville very quickly. So make yourself your priority, it means that work is going to take 8-9 hours of your day, and you need to schedule in some "Me time" before you squeeze in all the other household and family stuff.

As you all know, I manage my household without hiring a maid in India, but that doesn't mean I do everything myself. My husband and daughter do their bit, I have a cook to take care of hubby's tiffin lunch, bought a dishwasher to do the dishes and my mom gifted me this awesome cleaning robot.

It's still doable

Alright! I might have killed a few myth and broken a few idillic visions of what working from home is like, but don't let that discourage you. If you really want to make it on your own, just put in the hours, dedication and passion necessary to pull it through. The only thing you really shouldn't loose sight of, is that work is work, no matter where you do it. The pitfalls of working from a corporate office is the whole commuting gig, having chatty colleagues and a boss to breathe down your neck if you don't meet deadlines. The pitfalls of working from home is to not get distracted by your TV, Phone, or raid your fridge too many times a day and stick to a schedule that nobody but yourself can make your follow.

With a little willpower and a well drafted plan you can totally do it, and if you are dealing with family members that don't get it, just get a lock on your home office space and drown their screams by putting music on.

As many of you know, when we moved to our new flat in 2017, we made the decision to manage our household without a maid, and we are going to close on 2 years doing so this April.

In fact, my blog post "How we manage without a maid" is a permanent resident in my "Popular blog post" widget and the numbers of Google searches on the topic that leads people to my blog keep increasing.
I guess it's safe to say more and more people in India are getting fed up with the drama and slacking that comes with having a maid and are looking into ways to do without.

Last year, I even did a summary of our 1 year anniversary of doing it without. Back then, after a long year of wasting nearly 2 hours of our day doing the dishes by hand, we lucked out on a very sweet deal getting a second hand dishwasher for close to nothing and it had made our lives that much easier, all we had left to do was the floor, and the usual heavy load of laundry and deep bathroom cleaning on weekends.

Fast forward to now, and we have a new member in our cleaning team :

This is frankly, the purchase I never even thought of making...EVER. I never even considered a Robot cleaner as a viable option, to me they really sounded like this useless household gadget that just looks fun to have.

I obviously was totally wrong and I stand corrected.

I only became a proud owner of one a few days ago, and only because my mom, who is still staying with us decided I needed one and gifted it to me because I'm turning 40 later this year.
When she mentioned robot cleaners, I'm pretty sure my eyes popped out of my head and I did ask her if it was really THAT effective.
Apparently she has a friend that pretty much swears by hers and has 5 dogs. She also told me how those things go charge themselves on their own, are able to chart the optimal path through your flat after a few use and how they reach all possible corners, and even come with a wet mop function...whaaaaa....at!

Strong of all that, my mom asked me to go check what was available on Amazon India, that led to her buying us the iLife X620 (This is an affiliate link by the way). If you are reading this from the US, iLife has changed the name of the model, it's called the A6 model there.

Where has this thing been all my life!

Thanks to Amazon Prime, my new toy reached me within 24 hours of ordering, and after unboxing it, reading the instructions and putting it to charge I got to use it.

At that time, Ishita, my mom and I were home and I kid you not we were like children on Christmas day. We obsessively watched the robot's every twists, turns and sweep, saw it glide under furnitures with ease, spin around the table legs, and leaving nothing alone.

We bust in laughter when my cat freaked out seeing it in action for the first time and laughed some more when the robot took on cleaning precisely all around Jasmine with laser precision (Jasmine couldn't be bothered to move).

By the time hubby made it home, we were done with the vacuum cleaner mode and had attached the wet mopping tank and he joined us for a Robot gawking session until it finished cleaning the last spot in our living room.

The end result was that we were all thoroughly impressed with how clean everything was. For almost 2 years, we've been sweeping and mopping daily, and frankly we were good at it already. But that clean-bot bested us in one session.

Sure it takes more time than us covering the whole flat, but what it does, it does it way better than we ever could. It covered the whole flat in about one hour and a half of vacuuming and then thanks to the fact it had memorized some paths across our home already, it did the mopping in just one hour. The floor felt squeaky clean under our bare feet, and I don't think it ever felt that way before, not even after using a combination of sweeping and steam mopping.

What it does and how it works

According to the iLife website and the description on Amazon, our model has "GPS" of sorts, it is able to map paths around your home after a few repeated uses. When we used it the first time, it went spinning around, and bumped into things a lot. It also went back and forth and visited a corner or room more than once, which led to it taking an hour and a half to vacuum the whole flat. When we put the mop on, it had already figured out a few paths and bumped a lot less into walls and furnitures and accomplished its task in about an hour.

The next morning it was done with vacuuming in 45 minutes but because we had bags and stuff on the ground that wasn't there the night before, it bumped into them and paused a few times to figure out how to deal with it.

The robot comes with its charging station, a mop attachment, a set of spare brushes, and a remote control.

According to the instruction manual, the robot can be even programmed to start cleaning on it's own at a given time, which means that even if you are sleeping or out of the house, it will clean the home everyday if you instructed it to do so at let's say 1pm.

Once the battery is low, it will go put itself back on its charging station all on its own, though I am yet to see it do that because its battery life is more than sufficient to do the whole flat in both dry and wet mode. It also will go back to its dock once it has completed its task, something it didn't do the first few uses as it was still mapping the flat surface but now it does it everytime, unless for a reason or another we had to switch it off or move it, it then lost track of what it did already and will redo the whole route before it feels compelled to "Go Home".

The remote also has a "Go Home" button, so that whenever you need it to stop, you can instruct it to go back to its charging dock, and it is amazing to watch. It will stop it's work, and find the path back to its home, sometimes it will roam a bit more until it homes in on the beacon, but once it catches it, it pretty much goes for the home run.

Yet another time saving tool

It's not that sweeping and mopping really took that much time in my day, it was a 45 minutes a day chore, but looking back at it already, I noticed that I pretty much planned my day around it because while I was cleaning the floor, I wasn't doing anything else.

There were days I would wonder if I would get the time to sweep, go grocery shopping, go for a workout, work on a design and then conduct a class in the evening. Inevitably, the workout would go down the drain, or I would forego other chores like cleaning the kitchen a bit more thoroughly or dusting behind the TV.

With this robot, I seriously don't have to worry at all, it's just about pressing start, and let it do it's thing.

Once it's done cleaning, it automatically goes back to its charging station, the only thing I need to do, is remember to remove the dust container and switch it for the mop tank attachment if I want to mop immediately after vacuuming.

And in the end, even if it just freed 45 minutes of my day, it is still a big difference, you never really know how much until you suddenly have it back.

We live in a world were time is a precious commodity, it makes no sense for anybody to waste it on cleaning if there is an alternative within reach (any alternative)
For me, having a maid simply wasn't working, I spend more time arguing with her about her not moping properly or attempting to cut corner. I took it upon myself to do the job, and while it wasn't a biggie, I'm still really happy not to have to do it every mornings.

The robot has it's limitation, every cleaning tool does, and it struggles getting the stains off the kitchen floor, or the permanent film of grease that comes with the whole cooking without a chimney territory, and yes, we will continue to steam mop once a week all through the flat to really prevent sticky dirt from piling up, but all in all, it has eliminated the whole daily chore of cleaning the floor.

On a windy dusty day, we just run the vacuum mode twice, and it's amazing to see how much crap has collected on the floor in a short 8 hours between cleaning sessions.

It's not necessarily cheap though

Like with anything, you get what you pay for, and while some of these robot cleaners come withing the price range of a few thousands rupees, do make sure to read the reviews first. Not all robots are equal, some only vacuum clean, others do both, some are more efficient than others dealing with pet hairs, and cheaper ones also means less battery life, or no real ability to memorise what your home layout is.

Mine came up with a 34k price tag, some of the same brand will set you off between 18 and 20k other brands will still be around 10k for one that comes with fair reviews. And there are some even pricier than the one I own. If you search "Roomba" in Amazon it yields you a fair selection of what is available in India.

In the end, I did calculate that our former maid used to charge us 6k a month to do the dishes, mob the floor, clean the bathroom and cook. This amounted to a total of 72k rupees a year spent for what was essentially an all round half assed job punctuated with drama, whining, and more leaves than hubby gets in a year.

In our new home, we only have a cook charging us 3k a month, so we save a total of 36k a year cleaning things ourselves. So even if we had paid full price for a dishwasher last year, and the robot this year, we would still have been under what it cost us to have a maid clean over a period of 2 years.

And both the dishwasher and the robot do not serve us stories of relatives either dying or getting married every 2 weeks, they don't come late, and they don't complain the job is too difficult and take too much time. They also don't ask us for a hefty Diwali bonus, extra money for their kids school fees, or for a trip they need to take somewhere.

Going maid free is all about investing in the right tool

I said it before, I'll say it again you need the right tool to get started on that maid free gig. In 2017 I wrote a blog post about the essentials you need to spend money on in the beginning, it was a list of what is the best cleaning tools you can get in India.

In that blog post, the most high tech of them was the steam mop, I still love and use mine regularly, but seriously, the more upgrades on your tools you can afford over the year, the better.

And remember, the real magic of managing without a maid in India is to get all family member to pitch in, regardless of which gadget and appliance you may have to help you.

In our home, the cleaning is still everyone's job, and we each do our bit, even our visiting guests.

The trend of pairing jewel and pastel tones with gold accents has been around for a while, and frankly I don't think it will go anywhere any time soon.
Not with the fact that "Mid-century" revival is still in and going retro is the trend that keeps going steady.

Mid-century you say? If you are not familiar with the term this means the 50's trend of pastel everything, the one before the 70's ruined everything with avocado green and orange. I bear no love whatsoever for the horror 70's color combo because my childhood bedroom was done in a horrid geometric avocado green wallpaper and wall to wall carpet in the most 70's screaming orange.
In fact our bathroom was green too, and every kitchen appliances came in orange, we even had orange flowers in our Arcopal (Corelle type) plates, and the psychadelic orange flower print on our kitchen chairs is still vividly imprinted in my kind (along with the marcame like net curtains),

Give me the pastel tones of the 50's and 60's anytime over that monstrosity of a color scheme!

Disclamer: the following links are Amazon and Society6 affiliate links, if you buy anything I get paid a commission at no extra cost to you.

Needless to say that I tend to gravitate toward those tones in my artwork as well, even if it is just re-coloring and tweaking the originals in Photoshop to reach that result.
The art print in the picture above is proof of it, the original is in pink, purple and blue, but I couldn't stop myself from playing around a bit with it on my computer. The name of that artwork is "Tic Tac Toe hearts - Mint and Gold palette" and it's for sale in my Society6 shop.

I'm not the only artist and designer tapping into this trend, one of my favourite artist : Cat Coquillette also regularly re-color her work in that palette.

But you don't need to go as far as Society6 to get your fix of mint and gold, you will probably find it all around you since it is still a solid trend in furnishing and decor accents in India.

One of the items that has been sitting the longest in my home is my pen organiser on my desk :

This one is from Elan, and I have shared the Amazon link to buy it quite a few times, because seriously it's the best pen holder you can find if you are an artist with a lot of art supplies to store.

The brand has quite a lot of painted tin items in that same color, including that super cute trunk :

While I was looking around on Amazon to curate items for this blog post, I also came across that cute patent tote for the bathroom. I seriously love the picture where they show how everything could look in a bathroom :

It's the month of love, sweets and stuffed hearts and teddies for many, for me February is the pink month, because my synesthetic mind has decided it that way and having a calendar page in any other color would really throw me out of whack.

When I decided to go for that Art Nouveau theme for my 2019 calendar, I also knew I was going to go down Synesthesia lane all the way, which worked out great because I got to go crazy with hair colors on some of my ladies.
But before I ramble any further (and you know I will), you can go download the calendar page for this month here.

This illustration, like all the others in the Calendar (which you can download in full here) is for sale in my Society6 shop.
There are two variants of it, the first one is the non-month specific lady which goes by the name "Pink Lady" :

For the Mural I added a gradient background to the entire surface, but on all other products, she stands proudly on a white background, like on this lovely throw pillow :

If you are looking for the month specific design, fear not, I got hard cracking at it last December and uploaded everything in the past few weeks.
This is for all the bullet journal addicts and those of you wanting to mark your birthday month with something special.
As a calendar girl, she goes by the name "Lady February" and I intended her to be a planner sticker before anything else :

As an extension she also looks awesome on the notebooks Society6 sells:

I got into this little project on December 31st late afternoon, planning my post Christmas tree removal decor, also known as January decor.

I did post it on Instagram, and had a plan to turn it into a blog post with a few more pictures (that I never took). And before you know it, my mom came to visit, and it got promptly forgotten while we were eating out, sightseeing, shopping and catching up with family friends that tagged along.

My mom is still here, but I fell back into a healthier work routine and I just noticed that this little super simple DIY project has been sitting pretty in my Dropbox files.

So, instead of letting it go forgotten, I decided to post it, with just that one picture, and do all the explanations (there aren't really a lot of them) in words.

This project is pretty much a result of me trying to finish the two cans of spray paint I used in my "Turquoise and gold tin canisters DIY".
And guess what? I didn't succeed, I still have paint leftover, so expect at least another project involving mint green paint and possibly a few involving gold.

I also re-used the technique I used a few years ago for our "Christmas decorative plates", with the only difference that this time I did not buy brand new steel plates from a shop, I went digging in my kitchen cabinets and took a very old steel plate with high edges that I really never really use.

Once upon a time we had 4 of these, and I think we bought them in 2004, over the years one became a plant saucer that we abandoned in one of our move, and I have no idea what happened to the second one we no long have.
Right now we have 2 of these left, one the cook uses to mix water and atta to make roti, and the one that is now a fancy centrepiece tray on my coffee table.
Before you ask, I do not regret the sacrifice one bit, it looks much better in its mint and gold avatar and pretty much match the table paint job I did a few months ago, it was a match made in pain heaven people!

So this is how I did it

First I covered the top of my washing machine in the utility area with newspaper. Because, when you work with spray paint, you need a well ventilated area, preferably outdoors.

Then I sprayed the inside of the plate/tray with the turquoise paint (that's what it says on the can), let it dry a bit and applied a second coat.

Spray paint dries fairly quickly, so you only really need to wait about 30 minutes per coat.

Once the inside was dry, I flipped it and painted the outside gold, then after my two coats of gold were dry, I put some masking tape over the gold edge and used the turquoise paint to define the rounded rim better.

I let it dry overnight before putting it on my coffee table, just to make sure nothing would stick or get dented.

The added bonus, is that it matches the pretty elephant oil diffuser Ishita got me for Christmas : Mint for the win people!

And with this little blog post I feel pretty accomplished not to have any old unfinished business, I can now tackle new projects without feeling guilty.

Wether you are a hobbyist or a pro, a bullet journalist or an illustrator, chances are you have worked with markers at one point or another. You might love them or hate them, and if you are new to them, probably super confused about the different types, brands and nibs.

This blog post has been inspired by a chat I had with a lady on Instagram, lady who is new to bullet journalling and once picked up an alcohol marker without knowing and wondered why it was so "bleedy"

Many do not know that not all markers are created equal and that they more or less fall in two different categories :

Alcohol based or water based

They both have their pros and cons, but the most important to remember is that they aren't used for the same tasks.

As an artist/designer and a bullet journalist, I use both type for different things so let me explain what each marker is what a bit more clearly. I'll post affiliate links to Amazon below, this means if you make a purchase, I get paid a commission at no extra cost to you.

So let's start our journey in the magical world of markers shall we?

Water based markers

If you are a beginner, or remember your childhood sketch pens, you are familiar with what is known as "Water based" markers, and chances are you've only worked with those.

They are called water based simply because the pigments in those float in water, making it a water based ink.

They are also water soluble and as far as I know, never permanent on paper or elsewhere. This means you can use a wet brush to create gradients and watercolor effect provided the marker you are using is made with quality pigment.

The elephants on that phone case were colored with those Sakura Koi brush pens and diluted with a water brush to give the proper effect in some places.

Water based markers have their pros and cons though, like everything, and depending what you plan to do, they might not be your best choice of medium.

Pros

- They are fairly affordable, depending where you buy them, Sakura Koi Brush pens are around 100 or less rupees a piece. Tombows dual brush pens are around 170-80 rupees a piece and come in a wider range of colors.

- They are water soluble so you can make cool effects just using a blender pen or a water brush.

- Most work on any paper and many can hold their own and not ghost too much in notebooks. This makes them ideal if you are into bullet journalling. Tombow and Sakura Koi are both holding their own in my bullet journals, though some of the darker shades of Koi do tend to ghost a little.

Cons

- They destroy the paper fibre. Water seeps through the paper and bloat it, there is no way around it, and this means that you can't do a lot of shading or add too many layers of water based ink on an illustration. Even the best Bristol paper WILL suffer with a water based marker. People assume that there is no damage done to the paper unless there is ghosting or "bleeding through" and that is simply not so. Just try blending colors with a water based marker and you will notice the top layer starting to "plush".

- They are streaky. This means that even with professional grade water based markers, you will never really get a super even color if you use them on a wide surface. This is because the water in the ink evaporate slowly and controlling the amount of pigment that goes on paper is always going to be tricky.

- They aren't refillable. While not all alcohol markers are either, I am yet to come across one brand of water based markers that can be refilled at all. This means that the pretty brush pen you bought, will run out, and you'll need to replace the whole thing. They also don't come with replaceable nibs either. They are disposable, and in the long run, not very budget or environment friendly.

- They don't scan well. This means if you are creating an illustration you are intending to digitize, you are better not using them. This is due to the whole paper destructive nature of water based markers. A bloat and destroyed paper fiber might not be noticeable with the naked eye. It becomes a HUGE problem when you are going to scan it at 1200 DPI to turn into a commercial artwork. Trust me, I spent way too many hours cleaning up markers blotches in Photoshop, the worst of them came from water based markers.

What they are best suited for :

If you are a bullet journal addict, hand lettering artist or enjoy coloring in those adult coloring notebooks, they are you best bet.

They do well on regular paper, as well as marker paper and if you aren't planning to scan your artwork to apply to products, you can safely stick to those and get the best out of them.

Alcohol based markers

Alcohol based markers are really the next level in the marker world, and pretty much what designers, illustrators and graphic artists use for their work.

They get their name from the fact the pigments float in an alcohol based ink that evaporates very quickly on paper, once dry the pigment is permanent on all paper and in some cases, other surfaces as well. This means you need to work fast if you want to blend colors and there is definitely a learning curve you must scale before your get any satisfaction working with them.

I'm not going to lie, I disliked them the first time I tried them. But as I got the hang of them, I started appreciating their pros and the possibilities they offer.

There are many brands out there, the two main ones are Copic markers and Touch markers. In India, if you are deciding between those two brands, I suggest you go for Copic as they are distributed in India, and finding the refill inks and replacement nibs is going to be less of an issue than with Touch.

But those while being the biggest brands and the most standard in the design industry, they aren't your only choice. Chameleon pens are another cool option, they come in a big range of color and have a unique system that allows you to mix and blend colors directly on the nib. Each pen comes with a white/transparent "blending chamber" and you have the possibility to buy colored "blending chambers" as well.

They are a bit more costly than Copic in India, but you can get away with owning less colors and still make amazing gradients. Like Copics, they are refillable and the nibs can be replaced, so the pen is a one time investment.

In the more budget friendly brands you have Bianyo markers, which I haven't personally tried but have good reviews. And Brustro which I have tried in one color, they recently launched a range of markers that have a brush nib rather than a bullet nib.

- The ink is non-streaky. This means you'll have a better finish on larger surface provided you learned how to use them well.

- They are non destructive to paper even though they bleed through Bristol paper. The pigment is strong in them, but the alcohol evaporate quickly, which means the integrity of the paper is not compromised. I'll get to the paper thing later, just know that you can layer your alcohol ink for a while before any sort of damage is done to the paper.

- Many brands are refillable, this is true for Copic markers, Touch markers, and Chameleon pens. This means the actual pen is a one time investment, and ink refills are cheaper in the long run. You can also replace the damaged nibs on those markers, making them a lifetime investment.

- They scan well. Artwork made with alcohol based marker translate much better in the scanner and in Photoshop. This is because the damage to the paper is non existent in the first place and the color applies evenly to the surface causing less blotches and bleeds.

- Big color range. All big brands have a huge color range of markers, Copic has a whooping range of 358 colors if you go for the Sketch marker. This means you can really get into intricate shading and gradient.

- The color can be layers and blended. Because the alcohol dries quickly, you can layer color or even add intensity to a color by adding another layer on top. While the ink is still damp you can also work and blend 2-3 colors and create an effortless gradient. There is a learning curve to master those techniques though, but once you have, you will not be disappointed.

Cons

- They are expensive, there is no way to put it nicely, if you want the quality, and the color range, you'll have to pay the price. A Copic Sketch cost 385 rupees a piece. When you start with them, I suggest starting with a few basic sets in colors you are more likely to use rather than buying a huge set, and then build your collection a pen or two at a time. They have really nice basic blending trios in a variety of colors that won't put a huge dent in your budget. You can also go for Copic Ciao Doodle Packs. As mentioned earlier, Touch markers make less sense in India, and Chameleon pens are even pricier at around 420 rupees a piece.

- You need a lot of colors if you are going to draw with them. You can start with a blending trio, but in the long run, you'll realise that a big color range is a must. To make a basic shading with alcohol markers you need a minimum of 3 blending shades : a light, medium and dark tone.

- The learning curve is big. I have used various mediums in my artist life : pencil, acrylic, watercolor, oil, water based markers...none have challenged me the way alcohol based markers have. So considering the cost issue, I recommend the "less is more" approach to buying them. If you end up hating them in the long run, you don't want to face having spend thousands and thousands of rupees on them.

- They bleed through paper, not because they destroy the paper (because they don't) but because the pigment is intense in those. This means that you can only use them on one side of the paper. And said paper HAS TO be premium bristol paper if you don't want to waste ink. That means they can't be used in a bullet journal.

- While most are non-toxic, I don't think I would want a kid near them, the alcohol fumes in some brands is stronger than in other, and that could be an issue with little ones.

- You must store them horizontally to prevent them from drying out, this means you need to plan storage for them carefully.

What they are best suited for :

Any professional grade work or artwork that will end up being digitized. They are the first choice for illustrations, manga character drawings, and work that need to stand the test of time (the ink in most markers is archival).

Give them a miss if you are a bullet journallist, they are totally incompatible with the type of paper you find in a BuJo.

Let's talk paper

Now that we talked marker, and how some destroy paper while other don't, let's just talk about it a bit more shall we?

Markers, be it water or alcohol based do better on smooth paper, no ifs no buts. That is because grainy paper will work against the nib and damage the nib, and in the case of a water based marker, absorb an insane amount of moisture and loose its integrity faster than a non grainy paper.

With Alcohol markers you want to use a smooth bleed proof marker paper like a good quality bristol paper. For all my sketches, I use this Stratmore 300 Visual Journal and for my small illustrations including my "Art Nouveau ladies" I use this Bristol paper from Canson.

NEVER EVER EVER use watercolor paper with markers, you are setting yourself up for a disaster. In fact, I found that using water based markers on any other paper but bristol paper leads to a disaster, a reason why I don't really use them a lot even in my bullet journal. So if there is one investment to make if you are going to be working with any type of marker it's the paper.

I've been quite busy this month and this blog post has been in the making for over a week now. As I mentioned previously (and on Instagram), my mom is visiting, so I spend all of the past 7 days out of my home the whole day.
Today I am taking a day "off" to finish uploading designs, catch up on my emails and FINALLY sit down and write that long overdue blog post.

As you probably know if you have been following me for years, I take down the Christmas tree and everything Christmas related on January 1st. This leaves quite a hole in my living room and I came up with this genius "January Decor" idea. It's still festive, but minimalist and fresh.
I've done the gold and glass cookie jar in the past, or the white tassel garlands. One year I even decided to permanently introduce fairy lights in my year round decor.

This year, I kept with the fairy light theme, because they are awesome, festive, yet minimalist enough to blend in any decor.
But I went a step further :

I am a recyclable rubbish hoarder, first because it's pretty much free craft supplies, and then because it always come in handy to have things like toilet paper rolls, boxes and glass bottles and jars to conduct a kids art class.
As a result, I had quite a few big wine and whiskey bottles stashed in storage that had been screaming to be used in DIY project for ages. Beside, booze bottles really have the coolest shapes it would be a crime to throw them away.

For this project, I found LED strings of lights mounted on a plastic cork so that they can be put inside any bottle. The cork also conceal the button batteries required for them to work. These have been one of the most awesome Amazon find in the recent past, and they have been on my wishlist for a few weeks before I decided to bring closure to 2018 and buy them to start with a fresh and happy DIY project in 2019.

If you want to pull this decor off, start by buying these lights, they come in a pack of two, so order as many as you have bottles to use them in all at once.

Then wash the bottles you want to use properly and let them dry completely before sliding a string of light in each bottle. The "cork" or rather bottle stopper is tapered and will fit on top of any regular bottle neck.
To make it an interesting display, mix and match bottle sizes and shapes. For this project, I went for white glass to maintain a sense of unity, and minimalism, but if you have colored glass bottles, by all mean give it a try.

The beauty of these is that you can move them around, the lights are battery operated, so you don't need to keep your light display near a plug point.
I am already seeing myself moving those lights around to decorate my balconies on a Summer night, or buy more for next Diwali and spread them all around my home.

Best of all, this project is a super quick one, it takes seconds to slide a string of light inside a bottle and have an interesting light accent just about anywhere in your home : fancy dinning table, bathroom counter, coffee table, kitchen....

I hope you celebrated well last night, and that you are now ready to tackle the year ahead with oomph, passion and a fresh sense of determination.
For those who partied a bit to hard last night, give it a few hours and a lot of coffee and you should be on track for a year of awesomeness in no time.

Like all the previous years, I decided to offer the calendar page of the month for download on the 1st of each month.
This is in case you missed the big 12 months bundle download post, or simply don't see yourself downloading and printing it all at once. If you belong to that category of people, go download the January page here.

In any case, have fun planning your month/year ahead with my colorful calendar, I put a lot of time into creating every art nouveau inspired illustration, each of which comes in colors matching how my synesthetic mind sees months.
January has always been light blue and gold in my mind, so it makes sense that "Lady January" matches that theme.

Like last year, all my illustrations are for sale in my Society6 shop, this year however, there is a little "twist" as I created artwork based on the original artwork without adding any text, like this one :

Her name under this Avatar is "Moon Lady" and she comes on every single products Society6 has to offer, featured above is their Coffee Mug.

But! This year I figured out I might as well make a month specific artwork as well, for all those wanting to buy things like a planner sticker:

In this Avatar, which more or less match what you get on the Calendar, she is called "Lady January", that variant of the illustration comes in a more limited range of products as I typically focused on the ones that can be switched easily in your home decor, as well as those you can easily gift to a friend for their birthday like a mug, a few coasters, or a t-shirt.

I also focused on Stationery items like the stickers, cards and notebooks :

All of which can be used as a companion to the free printable calendar page, if you are a journal kind of person, the notebook in the picture above could be an awesome way to log all your month specific memories in style.
I'm in the process of getting all the Month Specific illustrations up and running in my shop, and it should take me a few more days to do so.

I'll be busy in the coming month as my mom is coming to visit from Switzerland, this means I won't be blogging as regularly, or even paint and draw so bear with me.

“Cynthia Haller is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.in.”